Schweiz Rundsch Med Prax. 1996 Jul; 85(27-28): 883-9.

[Mental image of the human being and of the physician in future-oriented medicine]

Nager F.

Modern medicine owes its impressive successes to the predominantly mechanistic picture of the human being and the prevailing idea of the physician as a health technician. Neglects of modern medicine, however, are also founded on this one-sided, incomplete sight of the human. A future medicine, able to survive and to answer human needs, has to follow the call of the complementary and has to correct its bias by a four-fold development: by forging links between scientific-technical intelligence and humanities and human culture, by mutual approach between academic and complementary medicine, by a respectful attitude, and by recalling the complementary reality of physicians as experts and partners.